“How could they help but adore you?” Scott said without hesitation and sounding as if he had spoken almost without realizing it.
It was such an unexpected and unlooked-for compliment that she couldn’t help the pleased blush that heated her cheeks. “I truly am doing an insufficient job of thanking you for all you’ve done. I don’t know how I would have endured this journey without you.”
Once more, he squeezed her hand, not having released it yet. “Feeling like a gallant knight rather than a burden is a welcome enough change that I consider myself well thanked for my efforts.”
“Do people often tell you that you’re a burden?” She couldn’t imagine anyone feeling that way about Scott.
“They don’t need to.”
“It took years for Mrs. Brownlow to convince me that she didn’t consider me a burden, but I still feel that way sometimes.” As her thoughts returned to the lady she was rushing back to, her mind grew heavy once more. “The last thing Mrs. Brownlow told me before I left for Brier Hill was to enjoy myself because life is fleeting. I wonder if she knew then how ill she truly was.”
Scott rubbed her hand with his, not attempting to interrupt or answer her rhetorical question.
“Of course, the next-to-last thing she told me was—” She stopped short.
The other topic of discussion had been Mrs. Brownlow’s very real worry that she would go to her grave uneasy about Gillian being alone. She had said that not knowing if Gillian would have someone in her life who filled the loving and caring role that Mr. Brownlow had filled in hers would make it difficult for her to pass peacefully.
“Oh dear,” she whispered.
“What is it?” Scott asked.
“Mrs. Brownlow had what amounts to a final request from me, a last wish.”
“Having remembered it, you can now do all you possibly can to fulfill it,” he said.
She shook her head. “It is not that simple. I would need . . . I would need to convince her that some gentleman has fallen deeply in love with me.” She slowly looked at him once more.
Thisgentleman, who had been a bastion of calm and kindness up to that moment, looked panicked.
“Before you crumble to pieces, just let me talk through this,” she said.
He was already shaking his head. And he had quite quickly released her hand.
“I’m not asking you to commit yourself to anything. I just need to think of a way to accomplish this. She told me in no uncertainterms that she would struggle to go to her grave peacefully if she was worried that I would be alone in the world. It was weighing heavily on her.”
“I truly don’t think she would expect you to meet someone and marry him in a matter of days, not if she truly wants you to be happy.”
“She would not expect me to return married. She’d hoped to hear that I had met someone and turned his head a little.” She took a moment to breathe, swallow, think. “Would you be willing to tell her that I was . . . popular amongst the gentlemen at the party, that I was a source of pointed interest among them?”
“I am not particularly comfortable lying to a dying woman I don’t even know.”
Though she didn’t think he meant the response unkindly, it still stung. “I was not so disliked as all that, I should hope.”
He rubbed at his face. “That is not what I meant.”
“I am fully aware that telling Mrs. Brownlow that a houseful of gentlemen took interested note of me would be stretching the truth, but if she thinks I have found my social footing, she will worry less.” Gillian was struggling to keep her voice steady. “And I don’t want her to—to die worried. About me. I want her to be at peace.”
“I am not a very adept playactor.”
She turned enough to face him more directly. “You managed to stretch things a bit when talking with Mme Dupuis, telling her how much we all depended on her judgment and how very grateful you were that she approved of the game you suggested.”
“None of those things was fully untrue,” he said. “Weweredependent on her evaluation of each game suggestion, as we couldn’t have moved forward with any she didn’t approve of. And Iwasgrateful when she finally gave her permission for us to play one.”
Was he truly not going to help her, he who’d been her gallant knight mere moments before? “You would need only pretend as much as you did with Mme Dupuis.”
He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Why could notyoutell her of your vast popularity and social acumen? Why involve me at all?”
“Because she won’t believe it if I say it happened.” Worry was beginning to bubble. How could she convince him that this was important—crucial? “Mrs. Brownlow knows far too many of my social blunders and is far too aware of my concern for herto not suspect I would be spinning a yarn ifItold her any of that.”